The Clerk’s Tale (21 page)

There was need in all nunneries, since all sleeping and living spaces were shared, only the prioress having any privacy, for somewhere the ill could be kept apart, either to avoid contagion or simply to spare the nunnery the disturbance that inevitably came with caring for the ill-Like St. Frideswide’s, St. Mary’s room for this was plain, with white-plastered walls and a few beds—four of them here, with a small table between each pair of them—and a single, shuttered window.

That much Frevisse saw before Domina Elisabeth closed the door, returning the room to a gloom broken only by the fierce, low glow of burning coals in a brazier set near the first bed inside the door. By that little light Frevisse could see only a little of the woman slowly, possibly painfully, shifting herself higher on the pillows there, until Domina Elisabeth lighted a splinter at the brazier, and sheltering its burning tip with her hand, returned to the table to light the oil lamp waiting there. In the small yellow spread of light from the low lamp flame Frevisse saw Sister Ysobel more clearly, lying back against her pillows now with her eyes shut while she recovered from the effort of moving even that slightly. She wore a long-sleeved winter undergown, her head was wrapped in a white kerchief, and her age was difficult to judge, wasted with illness as she was, her face sunk into thin flesh stretched over blunt bones, her eyes into hollows under her dark brows. She might have been Frevisse’s age or much older. Or possibly much younger. Not that age much mattered by now. What mattered more at this far end of living was how good or ill someone had lived the life they had had and how well they would see it out.

And how much more suffering the body would have to endure before the soul was able to go free.

Domina Elisabeth laid a hand on her cousin’s lying on top of the blanket and asked gently, “Is there anything you’d like? Anything I can get for you?”

Sister Ysobel opened her eyes. There was far more life in them than in her wasted body and her whisper was strong as she answered, “What I’d like is the window opened.”

Domina Elisabeth drew back from the bed, distressed. “Oh, Ysobel, you know that wouldn’t be to the good.”

Clear air in a sickroom was unhealthy, a danger to the ill, but, “What’s it going to do?” Sister Ysobel asked, laughter tingeing her voice. “Kill me? Dame Frevisse, if you would be so good.”

Without comment, Frevisse went to the window, set high enough in the wall that she had to stretch to reach the shutter’s catch, slipped it aside, and lowered the shutter, letting in the early morning’s light and a draught of cold air. Behind her, Sister Ysobel began to cough and Frevisse turned around to see her with a handkerchief pressed over her mouth, struggling with the spasm while Domina Elisabeth hurriedly poured a cup of water from the pitcher on the table beside the lamp, turned away from her cousin so she did not see—perhaps purposefully did not see—when her cousin’s coughing stopped and Sister Ysobel sank flat against her pillows again, her hand with the handkerchief dropping weakly to her side. But Frevisse saw and wondered into what terrors she would fall if ever there was that bright-red spotting of blood on a handkerchief of her own, before Sister Ysobel recovered strength enough to close her fingers around the handkerchief, hiding it.

Maybe she was past the terror of knowing she was going to die. She was calm, anyway, as she sipped from the cup Domina Elisabeth held to her lips and she smiled when she was done and said to them both, “Thank you.” She moved a hand slightly toward the bed beside her own. “Sit, if it please you.” And when they had settled side by each on the bed’s edge, she asked, “What have you done since I saw you yesterday, cousin?”

‘Nearly nothing,“ Domina Elisabeth answered. ”Talked with your prioress. Had supper. Went early to bed and slept. And here I am again.“

‘What a dull world I’m leaving. Sister Joane told me when she brought my breakfast that the funeral will be this afternoon. You’re going, the both of you?“

‘It seems best we do, since we’re here.“

‘Then you can tell me all about it afterwards.“ Spare of movement, either too weak or else saving what strength she had for when she had greater need of it, she smiled toward Frevisse without turning her head. ”My cousin tells me you’ve had to do with murders before this one, yes?“

Silently accepting that Domina Elisabeth had had to find things to talk of through the hours she had spent with her cousin, Frevisse granted, “Sometimes, yes.”

‘She says you’ve skill at finding out murderers.“

‘By God’s grace, yes,“ Frevisse admitted.

‘Have you been doing aught to finding out our murderer here?“

There were times when lying would be comfort and convenient but even then a sin and Frevisse said, ignoring the interested turn of Domina Elisabeth’s head toward her, “I’ve thought about the murder, yes.”

‘And you’d rather I didn’t ask you about it,“ Sister Ysobel said, smiling more.

Frevisse smiled back. “Much rather.”

‘Then I won’t.“ She paused for breath. ”On the other hand, you’re welcome to ask me whatever you like about it.“

‘Oh, Ysobel,“ Domina Elisabeth protested, ”you don’t want to think about such a thing now, do you?“

Sister Ysobel turned her smile toward her cousin. “Come now, Elisabeth. You have to know that presently I have a particular interest in death.”

Frevisse had noted before now that the dying were often able to speak more lightly of their mortality than those around them could. Domina Elisabeth was silenced for the moment by Sister Ysobel’s question as Sister Ysobel said to Frevisse, “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

If nothing else, it would pass the time, both for her and Sister Ysobel, and Frevisse said, “Your rosary. Could you show me how you were praying with it that day? How fast or slow you were telling the beads.”

Sister Ysobel reached toward the table where a rosary of both dark and silver beads lay waiting. Domina Elisabeth hastily handed it to her and Sister Ysobel smiled her thanks, took it, closed her eyes, and began,
“Ave Maria, gratia plena
…” Hail Mary, full of grace… deliberate over the words as if each one were precious.

After four Aves, one to a bead, Frevisse stopped her. “That’s the way you always say it?”

Sister Ysobel opened her eyes. “Always.” She handed the rosary back to Domina Elisabeth but kept her gaze steady on Frevisse. “Always,” she repeated.

Then there would have been more than time enough for the murderer to be well away before Master Gruesby raised an outcry.

For that matter, there would have been time and enough for Master Gruesby to have killed Montfort, left through the fence, and come around and through the stableyard to “find” the body.

Frevisse found she was not uncomfortably with that possibility, able to believe easily enough that Master Gruesby, after his years in Montfort’s service, might have reached the point of hating him enough to kill him. He could have lied to Montfort to arrange the secret meeting, giving him the chance both to kill and to keep suspicion from himself. Where was he supposed to have been when Montfort was killed? Did Christopher know whether he had actually been where he said he was? Had Christopher even considered he might be lying?

Putting that thought aside for later, Frevisse said, “You told the crowner that no one entered the garden through the infirmary door. That you heard voices of, you thought, two men about the time Master Montfort was murdered. That you know how long it was until the outcry was raised because you were saying the rosary in that while. What else should I ask you about? Unless you’ve remembered something more.”

‘It’s not that I’ve remembered more. It’s that I never finished what I had to tell that young man.“

‘Didn’t finish? Why?“

‘Because I began to cough, and before I’d done, he thanked me and left.“ Sister Ysobel could put little force into the words but she bit them short with displeasure. Then she unwillingly smiled. ”Sister Joane was glowering at him from the doorway. She frightened him off, I think. And I made no matter of it afterwards because what little else I had to say wasn’t enough to change anything, I doubt.“

But she wanted the chance to say it anyway and Frevisse obliged by asking, “What else was there?”

‘The door from the passage into the garden. It creaks a little, hardly to be noticed unless one has nothing else to do but lie here and listen to whatever there is to hear. Before I heard the men talking together, it opened and shut only once. Nor was it open long. Only long enough for one person to pass through.“

‘A creak as it opened, a short pause, another creak as it closed,“ Frevisse said. ”Like that? Not long enough for two people to have come through it?“

Sister Ysobel made a small, agreeing nod. “The next time I heard it was just before the dead man’s clerk made his outcry.”

There was nothing helpful in that. It was already certain, from the witnesses in the stableyard, that only Mont-fort and Master Gruesby had come that way, but before Frevisse had to say that to her, Sister Ysobel went on, “I suppose the murderer must have come through the fence. That’s an easy guess, though no one’s said so. It was the other thing I wanted to tell that young crowner. About hearing the murderer.”

Frevisse’s heed sharpened. “You heard him?”

‘I heard him walking. Well, heard someone walking and afterwards knew it must have been him.“

‘You’re certain it was a man?“

‘The walk was too heavy and long-strided for it to have been a woman. Skirts, you know.“

‘You didn’t wonder why there was a man in the garden?“

‘I wondered but supposed we had a new gardener and no one had told me. There was no one else he was likely to be.“

‘But you’re certain you didn’t hear him come in?“

‘I slightly thought he must have come in by the gate and that I somehow hadn’t heard him. You know how one does, wanting an answer and taking one that’s simple rather than right.“

Frevisse knew. It was a common, sometimes perilous trick everyone sometimes played on themselves, herself included. “And you’re sure he hadn’t come through the infirmary?”

‘I wasn’t fevered or drowsing that afternoon. When I’m not…“ She paused, maybe to catch her breath*—her dying lungs made even so little as she was asking of them difficult—but also she sounded a little ashamed as she continued, ”When I’m awake and unfevered, I’m always listening. In hopes someone is coming to see me.“

Domina Elisabeth leaned forward to take her hand. Sister Ysobel returned her hold with a slight squeeze and went on, “I’m certain no one came that way. When the gate creaked with Montfort coming in, I thought it was the other man going out and wondered how I had missed hearing him when he came in.”

‘I’ll speak to Sister Joane about having the gate hinges greased,“ Domina Elisabeth said.

‘Oh. No, don’t,“ Sister Ysobel protested. ”It gives me something to hear. Until spring comes…“ Her pause then, as if something in her had suddenly hurt, betrayed how surely she knew there was likely to be no spring for her this year or any other, before she went on, ”… there’ll be something more to hear in the garden than sparrows quarreling sometimes. But until then, with so little to hear, I’d rather the gate went on creaking.“

‘Of course,“ Domina Elisabeth murmured, meaning to be soothing, Frevisse supposed.

But she also supposed Sister Ysobel would prefer to be distracted rather than soothed and said, “So you heard the man who must have been the murderer walking. For how long, do you think, before Master Montfort came in?”

‘I heard him walking not long after Nones started. I started the Office when the bell stopped. When everyone would have started it in the church. I’d reached
Olim locutus es in visione
by the time I heard Master Montfort come in.“

About a quarter of an hour, Frevisse could guess. Unless Sister Ysobel had been praying at a running pace and it was doubtful that she had.

‘I was maybe slower than usual,“ Sister Ysobel said, as if picking up her thought. ”Prayers pass the time and I never make haste over them anymore.“

Frevisse could not see yet that knowing how long the murderer had been there made any difference. But it might count for something later. There was the chance with every small piece that it might count later…

Sister Ysobel made a soft sound that was probably as near to laughter as she dared to come and, when Frevisse looked at her questioningly, said, “The way you were staring away to somewhere else, your mind gone far off and everything here forgotten. Did what I said help you any?”

‘It might,“ Frevisse said, the only truthful answer she had, and was saved from saying more by a nun coming into the room, breviary in hand, and the bell to Tierce beginning to ring. Forestalled from speaking by the Rule that enjoined silence when the call to an Office came but understanding readily enough the other nun was come to say Tierce with her cousin, Domina Elisabeth gave Sister Ysobel the breviary from the table beside the bed and, with Frevisse, silently rose and left, to go to the church for their own prayers.

Frevisse found small satisfaction in the Office, try though she did to put Sister Ysobel and what she had said from her mind for the while, and at the Office’s end she returned to the infirmary willingly enough with Domina Elisabeth, to find the other nun already gone, the breviary laid aside, and Sister Ysobel lying narrow under the blankets with flushed cheeks, her eyes fever-brightened, and her breathing more labored than it had been. But she said as soon as she saw them, “I’ve been thinking about what I heard,” then had to pause, fighting to find enough breath to go on, restlessly turning her head away from the hand Domina Elisabeth laid on her forehead.